ABSTRACT
Economic evaluations of public services have been available since 1963,5 and several landmark articles suggesting the application of these technique to health care appeared in the 1970s.6,7 Today, many textbooks complement each other in provid ing the neophyte with a thorough elaboration of the methods and their applica tion.8'n An excellent book is the latest edition of Drummond,11 for the richness of the examples provided and the suggested exercises. The availability of these refer ences has coincided with a steady growth in the number of economic evaluations of health care interventions. Well over 100 studies per year are published in general medical, medical specialty, public health and policy journals.12
